Chapter 2

Light flooded in. My brother, Ethan, stepped inside, his face full of concern.

"You're awake?"

He set a bowl of black, murky medicine down gently beside me.

"I know this is hard on you. But you know your condition is… well. Everything I do is for your own good."

"The Lion Queen wants you again tonight. Clean yourself up properly. Don't let her feel those sores on your skin."

Ethan let out a long sigh, his gaze dropping to my abdomen, which was still seeping blood. His expression carried three parts disgust and seven parts pity.

"You know what she's like. Obsessed with cleanliness. Can't stand a single thing out of place."

"Last time one of your pustules burst and stained the fur mat — she raged for an hour outside. Nearly threw us both out."

"If I hadn't knelt on the ground begging, swearing it was my fault, we'd both be vulture food by now."

If this had been the old me, I would have already hung my head in shame by now.

I would've hidden my knobbed, gnarled hands behind my back like a child who'd done something wrong.

Then I would've stumbled over an apology — swearing I'd be more careful next time, that I'd sand my skin smooth before I went to her again.

Honestly.

More than once, I'd sensed that Ethan's kindness toward me carried a suffocating coldness underneath it.

Whenever the beast queens had wrung me out to the point of near-death, he would sigh and say he wished he could help — that his heart belonged to someone else and he simply couldn't make himself go to them. It was such a burden on me, he'd say.

When I was starving and chewing on bark, he'd be up in the main house. Right in front of the beast queens, he'd throw his leftover bones down to me and announce loudly, "Ugly loves these — says the texture is the best part."

But I always managed to push those thoughts away.

Ethan was the rarest lop-eared rabbit shifter in the whole tribe. The pride of our entire bloodline.

How could someone like him have any ill will toward an ugly wretch like me?

Until now.

I watched the comments light up.

[LOL, the male lead's manipulation game is next level. The Lion Queen rejected him because he was bad in bed — but he turned it around and blamed Ugly for dirtying the mat.]

[I think the male lead is deliberately keeping Ugly from getting treatment. The worse those sores get, the more ashamed Ugly feels. Too embarrassed to show his face anywhere. Keeps him a shadow forever.]

[That's just how our clever little bunny operates! Honestly, even if Ugly got cured, he'd never be half as good-looking as the male lead — but you can never be too careful, right?]

[Don't worry, he already slipped Sterilization Weed into that medicine. It'll help the beast queen conceive, but it accelerates aging in the drinker. This freak doesn't have many doses left. Once the Lion Queen delivers, he'll be done.]

I couldn't stop myself from clenching my fist tighter around the straw beneath me.

Meeting Ethan's wide, innocent eyes, I found — for the first time — that I couldn't make myself crawl over like a dog and drink that medicine.

I didn't know what I was feeling.

I pressed my cracked lips together, my voice rough and low, and said something I'd never said before.

"My body… I think something's wrong with it."

"Tonight… I want to rest."